Rae Armantrout

NECESSITIES

  1

The obligatory whorls
of the red rose

on almost every stem,
as if beauty

and redundancy
were one and the same.

  2

The way a fugue can seem
sad yet reassuring,

someone always ready
to carry on from where

you—which one is you?—
leave off.

What you think we’re carrying,
that is something else.

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